May the brackets be with you

We are many things here at the spacious, shag-carpeted Cheese Fry offices, but college basketball fans is not one of them. Thankfully, geek website io9 kindly created a March Madness bracket consisting solely of sci-fi movies.

How'd the movies fare? Glad you asked.

From the northwest bracket (the io9 brackets aren't labeled, but it sounds cooler to name them, don't you think?), #1-seed Star Wars advanced without breaking a sweat, while #3-seed Terminator 2 had no trouble beating #2-seed Day the Earth Stood Still and #7-seed District 9.

There were likewise no shocks in the southwest bracket as #1-seed 2001: A Space Odyssey and #2-seed The Empire Strikes Back advanced. It was a real nail-biter however, as #13-seed Independence Day almost edged 2001. It's become hip to trash Independence Day, but it's hard to find another world-wide disaster movie that puts as much effort (or tries to, at least) into special-effects as it does its characters. And while we do stipulate that the beginning and end of 2001 are pretty out-there, the middle section with HAL is gold.

Big upsets in the northeast bracket as underdogs stampeded over the favorites. #12-seed Total Recall ("Consider it a divorce") blows past #4-seed Back to the Future and #1-seed E.T., while #10-seed Sunshine (yes, we know the ending is absolutely terrible) beats #2-seed Wall-E.

And in the southeast bracket, things proceed as the selection committee surely intended, as #1-seed Blade Runner and #2-seed Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan advance to the Elite Eight.

And here's what happened next in the Elite Eight round... (By the way, how nerdy is this entire exercise? Good grief.)

#3 Terminator 2 defeats #1 Star Wars (we all have fond feelings about Star Wars, but it's about 20 minutes too long - search your feelings, you know it to be true)

#2 Empire Strikes Back defeats #1 2001: A Space Odyssey (2001's ending finally catches up to it)

#12 Total Recall defeats #10 Sunshine (Sunshine's ending finally catches up to it)

#1 Blade Runner defeats #2 Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (we love Khan, but Blade Runner's look shaped the entire genre - there's sci-fi before Blade Runner and sci-fi after Blade Runner)

And in the Final Four round...

#2 Empire Strikes Back defeats #3 Terminator 2 (bubble gum beats dark-and-grim)

#1 Blade Runner defeats #12 Total Recall (visual style beat narrative pretzels)

And in the championship...

#2 Empire Strikes Back defeats #1 Blade Runner

This feels right, don't you think? And not just because we have a toy Tauntaun sitting on our bookshelf.

Tweet